A Start, A Finish and a Stupid Human Trick

Hello again everyone!  There must be something wrong here - two blog posts in such a short amount of time?  But I have another finish and a start so figured that now was as good of a time as any before things really start getting busy around here.  DS is going to be coming home from College on Friday (I can't believe that Year 2 is done - and a 4.0 in his major - yahoo!) so things are going to slow down once again on the project completion.  Although he has a job for the summer - it starts on Monday - at the wonderful time of 7:00 a.m.  Can you just hear his grumbling now?  LOL  It's good for him though, don't you think?  I just told him, "Welcome to the real world!"

First off the start:

Mary Gail

The Scarlett Letter

40ct Vintage Autumn Gold and AVAS 

I decided to keep going with the Scarlett Letter theme since I have so many of their charts that have been languishing around here for quite a long time.  After finishing Ann I wanted something else with some bright colors and I think that I've found the one - Mary Gail.  You can see a picture here:  http://www.scarlet-letter.com/samplers/gail.php  And notice the scissors?  A beautiful pair of Sajou scissors that I won on the Scarlett Letter Year blog.  I was so excited and a huge thank you to Nicola for picking my name.  I love them and they'll be a wonderful reminder through the years of Nicola and her fantastic idea to set up these Scarlett Letter blogs to commemorate her year.  It is so much fun seeing all the different Scarlett Letter samplers.  I think that it makes you more aware of their beauty when you see them actually being stitched!

Now, you will notice that there are some empty spots in the flower?  Well, that's where the Stupid Human Trick (SHT) comes in.  I know that on a few trips to the LNS I slowly picked up the AVAS threads.  I thought that I had all of them, but when I went to use a color the other night I didn't have it, nor did I have the next color.  This resulted in me pulling everything apart searching for the threads.  Well, I think I know what happened.  Head smack!!  I usually visit the quilt store near the LNS, probably bought something at the quilt store, put everything into one bag, came home, emptied the bag of the quilting things and then promptly threw out the bag forgetting the threads.  Definitely a Stupid Human Trick and one that I am sad to admit has happened before!  UGH!!  Hopefully my new order (which I will attach to my body with Velco) will show up today and I can get a move on!

And the finish?  Well, it's the Chippewa Nine Patch quilt - Finally!!  I was excited to wrap this one up!

Ahem!!  Here we go again.  Mr. Bailey claiming whatever is on the floor as his own.  He does this every time!!  I hope there isn't mud on his paws!  But here are a couple other shots.  I have to say that my lame camera isn't capturing the real beauty of this quilt.  I really love it!

Outside shot:

Inside shot:

I can't wait to get this quilted and the binding on it.  I think that it will go well in the family room since the room is predominately reds, golds and browns.  

After I finished with Ann Smith and this quilt, I've felt at some kind of loss as to what to work on.  Have I picked up the Sylvia blocks?  No - ironed the fabric and prepared the foundation piecing sheets, but nothing past that.  Talked to Dear Jane?  Not a whisper!  Do you ever feel at a loss when you finish something?  So I've been digging around to see what else I could come up with and this is what I have somewhat settled on - always subject to change - I change my mind about 5 times a day.  If you saw all the projects that I'm planning you'd probably have me committed:

The fabric triangles are left over pieces from the Snowball blocks in the Chippewa Nine Patch that I thought I would sew together and make a table runner for the family room.  And a Tilda doll.  I've been wanting to make one for the longest time.  And then a scrappy quilt.  I''ve been digging through my fabrics to see if I have enough for the look I want and I think that I do.  I was going to start working on a Pineapple quilt, but I'm holding off a little bit waiting to see if I'm going to need to use some of the fabrics I had thought of using on another quilt.  This quilt:

Evening Bloom by Blackbird Designs

Isn't it beautiful?  I have lusted after this quilt for a long time.  It's a Blackbird Designs quilt done in French General fabrics.  I have seen this quilt made before, but in a different color way.  This weekend I was in one of my favorite quilt stores and saw this hanging on the wall.  I loved this version of it so much.  I stood there drooling over it for the longest time and the shop owner must have known that I was in some kind of lust zone because she came over and whispered in my ear that kits would be available in about three weeks!!!  I almost kissed her!!  Do you think that it took me long to say "Sold"???  Happy Dance.  Now this is the reason why I'm not going to start the Pineapple quilt just yet.  I want to see exactly what fabrics are going to be used for this quilt and pull those from my bundles because.....well, I pull more Stupid Human Tricks than just throwing out floss and tend to make a "few" mistakes when I quilt, so I'll pull the fabrics from my bundles that match this quilt, and make the Pineapple out of the rest of them.  I can't wait to get started on this quilt!!

So that is it for me this week.  Now I better get cracking on working on something.  Problem is that the weather has taken a glorious turn for the better and it's hard staying inside.  I knew that this would happen, but I'm so happy to see green grass and flowers coming up and trees budding.  I just know that I won't be sewing as much for a while.  

Thank you everyone for your kind comments on Ann and to more new followers!!  I'm so happy to "meet" you.  I hope that Spring has finally arrived where you are, although I think that some of you in the west are getting another snow storm.  My heart goes out to you.  I'm sure that all of you have said "Enough already!"

Have a wonderful week!

Ann Smith is Finished!!

Hello everyone.  I know that once again I've been a bad blogger and seemed to have managed to disappear for another month.  Shameful, I know!  But the weather here in Michigan has left a lot to be desired over the past month (like it actually snowed on Saturday and Sunday - hopefully for the last time) and that meant that if the weather isn't good, then what better place to be than home getting into trouble with fabric and threads.  I know - I could be home and blogging right?  But doing crafty things has really won out over the past month.  And also there have been some family issues and being hit with that nasty virus going around and feeling like some kind of walking zombie for a while, so I've been AWOL.  I have been lurking through blogs though and am inspired by everything that you're working on (and even left some comments!).

Ann Smith, the sampler that I almost threw in the corner a few times (okay, maybe more than a few) is finally finished.  Woo Hoo!  She took me just short of four months to finish!  For me, she was somewhat of a challenge because I don't like doing over one, and especially over one on 35 count fabric.  And I hate using a magnifier - or did hate it.  Now the magnifier and I have become close friends so I don't think that over one is going to be a deal buster on future samplers that I pick out.  And I couldn't get the tension right on my scroll rods making the over one a PITA!  Luckily my DH did a wonderful thing and ordered me a Millenium frame and it should be here any day.  Didn't help for Ann but will help for my next sampler.  The DH knows how to get himself out of the dog house!  And he was in the dog house, but I'll spare you the details!  LOL  Actually it's an early birthday present and I'm hoping it will show up any day for my next SL project.  But, anyway here is Ann in all her glory - and the pictures are not the best - I think that my camera is doing a slow death act (pictures are clickable):

Ann Smith

The Scarlett Letter

AVAS Silk Threads and 36 ct. Magnolia 

She's such a colorful girl and I'm so happy that she's finished.  She was worth every moment of wanting to throw her in the corner, feed her to the dog or run over her with my car.  Every swear word (yep, I toss a few of those around at times) when I had to pick out over one threads.  Here are a couple more shots:

Over one words and over one birds

The over one Adam and Eve scene which almost caused me to pull my hair out, feed it to Bailey, run over it with the car - you name it, I wanted to do it.

A majestic lion (more over one) and a colorful bird!

I love, love this sampler!!  But now I feel lost!!  Every night, whether she was acting up or not, I wanted to stitch her - it was like some obsession.  I got over my fear of over one and actually (well, most of the time) enjoyed working on her.  I can't wait to get her into a new frame.

And the other thing that has been keeping me busy and has become an obsession is quilting.  I'm blaming my friends Di and Siobhan for this.  Well, you have to blame someone, right?  But, I can't seem to get enough of it for some reason.  I know that now that the weather is warming up I probably won't spend as much time on it - that and with having the kids home for the summer and things that we have planned to do, but for the time being I'm in quilting heaven.  I get up in the morning, exercise, take Mr. Bailey for a walk, shower and then hit the sewing machine or cutting table.  Oh yeah, there are those pesky errands and heaven forbid that the family has to be fed, but I've been like a crazed woman!  That's a good thing sometimes.  

I pulled out a kit that I had picked up on one of my quilt runs that was easy.  Made from Blackbird Designs Antique Fair line.  I needed something easy after working on the other three quilts that were more difficult and time consuming.  With this quilt you basically cut out three shapes and put them together and made a scrappy kind of quilt:

Antique Fair by Blackbird Designs Fabric

No pattern name

I thought that this quilt would be great for snuggling up with while I'm stitching at night in the winter and if we have a winter like what we had this past year, I'm going to need it.

Then I worked on my Sylvia blocks for the month.  I love working on these, but at times the directions are a little challenging:

And here are all the ones that I've done so far:

Sylvia's Bridal Quilt

The next months' worth of blocks showed up on Friday so I guess I'm going to have to get cutting.  I want to stay on track so that when the last blocks show up in about 8 months, the quilt will be ready for quilting and not languishing around in a drawer.

Then I did some work on the Dear Jane blocks:

Actually I have five more of these blocks in some form of finish.  They have applique work on them and since I've been so wrapped up with Ann Smith I haven't done the handwork needed, but now that Ann is done, I can get those finished soon.  This is another quilt that is really a challenge.  I've had to refer to the That Quilt site a few times:

Looks pretty bad, doesn't it?  Actually the block just needs some corners appliqued down on it and it will look fine.  You can see where my scissors are is the edge that I have to applique down.

But these blocks certainly can prove fussy and challenging.  But it's so good to have an online reference to help me out.  Thank goodness for the Internet and Ipads.  And while I should probably be pulling my hair out with these blocks, I have to admit that I'm loving the challenge of doing them!

And then I finally got my rear end going on the Chippewa Nine Patch:

I sat on those nine patch blocks for the longest time.  Actually, I was procrastinating because I had 19 of the blocks done out of 25 and ran out of some of the fabrics due to width variances on the pieces of fabric that I had.  Most of the fabrics used for this quilt are from French General lines.  I love me some French General!!  Since I hate working hard on anything and didn't feel like trying to figure out how to piece the rest of the nine patch blocks, I shoved them in the drawer, but finally decided to pull them out again.  As you can see I needed a little bit of chocolate to get me through the whole process.  I love those Pretzel M&M's!  LOL  Actually a margarita or a glass of wine might have gone well with the piecing, but I settled for the M&M's!  The quilt is finished now, but I'm still clipping threads and making sure that all the seams are going the right way.  Seems that not matter how hard I try when you're sewing nine patches some of the seams get sewn the wrong way, so I'll post the finish next time.

Now I'm scrambling for the next quilt to make around Dear Jane and Sylvia.  Did I mention that I love French General fabrics?  Well, I'm a French General fabric whore (doesn't sound too good, does it?) and every time a line comes out I have to buy a bundle of the stuff.  Seems that I have a few bundles:

And that's not all of it, but I don't want to embarass myself.  I love these fabrics (yes, I know that I already said that) and have feared cutting into these babies, but I finally found the quilt that I want to make out of some of them - actually two quilts, but one is all applique so that one will have to wait for a little bit.  I found the quilt that I want to make on a blog and since I haven't asked the blog owner for permission to talk about her quilt, I don't have a picture for now, but it's a Pineapple quilt and I'm giddy with excitement.  I'll try to get her permission and post it the next time!!

And since I didn't get the normal picture of Bailey hogging the new BBD quilt, I thought I'd post a picture of him since it's been awhile.  Ignore the mess in the background.  I lay out a bedspread for him so that dirt isn't all over the carpet.  I hate bringing out the vacuum if I don't have to.  Why vacuum?  There's quilting to do!  And the washcloth in the background - well, his favorite thing to do is raid the laundry basket!  What a face, uh?

So that is what I've been up to!!  Seems that I'm walking around these days with threads hanging all over me - certainly living up to the Threadgatherer blog name.  My DD says that she always knows what I've been doing during the day when I pick her up.  One glance at my shirt and the threads and she knows!!  She makes me pull them off if we go anywhere so that she's not embarrassed!

I want to give a warm welcome to some new followers that have contacted me lately and thank you to all of you that leave me such nice comments and emails.  I truly love receiving them!!  And I hope that you have a wonderful week and that Spring is finally making an appearance where you live.  For a lot of us, it's been a long, long winter!!

Hanging with Ann, Sylvia and Jane

Hey kids - I figured that I should make a blog post before another month ends.  Who knows, I might be able to squeeze in another one before the end of the month.  Although that's probably a lofty idea with the way I've been blogging lately.

I've been furiously working on one thing and another, and not a lot of results in any of them.  I'm still mired in the over-one land of Ann Smith.  Oh, how I love this sampler, but oh, how I hate me those over ones!!!  Well, I guess I don't really hate them as I love the results, I just hate that it takes so much time to do and leaves me each evening with eyes that don't want to focus for a hour or so.

Adam and Eve are finally in!  What a relief!  After that point, things went downhill quickly as far as stitching time.  I only stitch at night and had my son home for a week on his Spring break, so things were a little hectic.  Add to that the fact that frogs visited a couple nights to reek havoc in the Garden, and I didn't get too much further:

I've had a bit of  trouble with the leaves on the right-hand tree.  So much so that a couple nights were lost as far as stitching goes - lots of frogging.  And I kept making mistakes, wised up and just fudged the whole thing.  I want this over one section done so that I can move forward.  Stitching over two is going to feel like I'm stitching on 14 count Aida after all this over one stuff!  But the end is in sight - maybe another week?

When not hanging with Ann, I've been hanging with Sylvia and Jane.  Those two girls have a few tricks up their sleeves also.

Now when you look at these Sylvia blocks, please don't look close (of course, with me saying that you're all going to clicking away like crazy to get the picture to enlarge, so please ignore threads).  Whether you enlarge the picture or not, put your hand over the one on the bottom right.  That block was like some kind of unruly kid and it's going to be done over.  It involved a lot of Y-seams which I'm not knowledgeable about at all.  I did use Y-seams on the flower basket block next to it without too much of a hitch, but what happened with that one on the right is only one's guess.  Could help if I went out into the land of YouTube before I tried to put the block together.  Okay, that would be too easy and so I just went for it.    That was a mistake and I ended up going into YouTube after and then it all became crystal clear.  Still doesn't explain why the flower block came out fine (whatever!!).  I guess I'm like a guy whose lost that won't ask directions sometimes.  Or I get a smart-assed attitude and think that I can do it, and prove myself really wrong!  LOL

Then because I love to give myself headaches (not really) we decided to have a visit with Jane.  She's another ornery one too:

Four blocks and two rectangles.  Some blocks I'm just sewing, others I'm using foundation paper for them.  Or actually tracing paper.  Makes it so much easier to see your guidelines through the back side of the paper.  Those rectangles practically left me with a bald spot on the side of my head!  Fiddly little things, but I'm bound and determined to make this quilt.  I've only been sitting on the fabrics for this quilt for ten years.  It was a BOM and each month I have five blocks and one or two border triangles to do.  As much as it gives me long moments of pause trying to figure out what I'm doing and then making sure that I'm doing it right (or wrong and it still looks good - I'm not picky here), I am really excited to be working on this quilt.  I still have another block to do, but it's applique and I haven't sat down with it to sew it together.  One thing that I found with some of these fabrics -  there are fabrics out on the current market that are just like these fabrics that I received 10+ years ago only in different colors.  I was kind of stunned by that, but I guess that what they about everything that goes around, comes around is true - at least in this case.

After that I decided that I needed a break and just make something easy and fun.  I spied these kits at a quilt store not long ago and picked them up.  I sit on a pillow when I stitch and I thought that these would make the perfect covers for the pillow:

While the kits came with instructions, I found it much easier to do them following a video that I discovered on Pinterest (yep, finally got the clue about the benefits of videos).  I think it took an hour to knock out both of these!!

And last, but not least, I don't do the TUSAL, but the threads were piling up in the ORT basket, so it was time to dump them again.

That's a lot of thread.  But just in time for Spring.  I like to put this out on one of our bushes and let the birds make their nests out of them (no metallics in this pile).  Of course, that is if the birds start making their nests.  We're still in a deep freeze here in Michigan with no end in sight.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it warms up soon!!

So that's it for me!!  Thanks for stopping and paying me a visit.  I love receiving your comments!!  Hope that it's warmer in your part of the world and that you get lots of stitching time in!!

Google Reader is Going Away

Google Reader is going away soon (July 1st) so I've switched to BlogLovin and you can also follow me there.

Follow My Blog With Bloglovin.

I hope to have a blog update soon!!

Before February Ends......

I thought that I'd make a quick update about what's been going on around here!!  Seems that my plan to post every two weeks isn't working!!  But this is what I've accomplished the past few weeks.

Work on Ann Smith is progressing at a slow pace.  I'm working on the over one scene and while not hard to do at all, it is very time-consuming.  I'm not fond of working with a magnifier, but one-over-one on 35 count calls for it:

It's very easy (at least for me) to get off count when working over one.  So I've found that I have to make adjustments here and there.  I stitched all of what there is of Adam last night.  It's amazing how much you can get done if you can find two interrupted hours for stitching.  Around here, unfortunately, that doesn't happen very often.

This is where I was at the time of my last blog post:

And how it looks today.  I managed to get in some of the section above the red verse, the red verse, sky and scene below that is all over one.  Slow progress:

In the quilting arena, I have managed to get quite a few things done.  When I've found a half hour or so during the day (not every day unfortunately) I've been working along on the Sylvia Bridal quilt and managed to get all 10 blocks for the month done before the next set of blocks arrived.  Although, I got them done two days before - just in a nick of time.  These blocks are what I finished since my last blog post:

And here's the whole group so far - I still have six more to go before the next month of blocks show up here about mid-March or so:

I love these blocks and I've learned a lot working on them.  Probably more than I did with the Farmer's Wife blocks.  Although if anyone has worked on this quilt before, you probably know that the directions for these blocks - or some of them - leave something to be desired.  Blocks with five pieces are given directions to be foundation pieced, while blocks with 65 pieces are instructed to be pieced in the traditional way.  A little wonky if you ask me!  But still fun nonetheless.

If wrestling with those blocks and instructions weren't enough, I decided to finally make a journey into the land of Dear Jane and actually got one block finished!  Woo Hoo!  This project will take me years to finish as Jane is kind of a fill-in project, but one block down, only 224 more to go.  Yes, I know - the men with the white coats will probably be arriving at my door shortly!!

Considering that these blocks are 4-1/2 inches at this point (4 inches finished), I think it came out pretty good.  I won't mention how long it took me to put this block together though!  This was foundation pieced and I should mention that it took me far longer to put together than it should have.  I must learn to put the pieces on the foundation paper in the order that they are listed - not back-asswards like I did!  LOL

And seeing as I don't have enough to keep me busy, I also jumped on the Scarlett Letter Manifesto SAL that some of us are participating in, although I didn't make much progress on it.  I'm working on this on Wednesday nights when I have time.  The past two Wednesdays have not worked well for stitching, but I got a little stitched the first night:

Another one of those BAP's, but I love it, and I've really enjoyed working on it when I've been able to pick it up (okay, it was only one night - but I liked it!!).  I'm stitching it on 25 count Jobelan.  Not a fabric that people use much from what I've seen, but it works well with this piece (and it's a way to use up 10 year old stash!!).  I had actually thought of stitching this on 40 ct silk gauze.  The idea being that you would do it in tent stitch and it would progress faster.  But I decided that I don't necessarily want to go blind, so I shoved that idea in the drawer and I'll just continue with the 25 ct. Jobelan.

Then I joined in on the Sunday Santa SAL on Instagram (#sundaysantaxs).  If you are on Instagram, look me up - I'm Threadgatherer (makes sense, right?). I didn't get much done on it at all, although I do have the star and part of Santa's face in at this point - just too lazy to take a picture.  For a couple nights of stitching you would think that I would have more done, but unfortunately my brain seems to have a hard time wrapping itself around the thought of doing something small - like something that could be finished in a few days.  If it's not a BAP, then my mind rebels and forgets how to count!  I don't know why that is.

Red Santa

BOAF Designs

Mystery Linen and DMC

And last but not least - Baskets:

Nice, huh?  Look closely.  Do you see what I see?  They're not done, they're just pinned waiting for me to pick up needle and thread and get going on these again.  I hear that Siobhan is wiping my butt in the dirt with the baskets.  I think that she's has over 90 finished and I'm still hovering around the 50 basket count.  These were suppose to be my stitching project when DD did her three nights of dance - I would usually spend one night walking around the mall (exercise with some shopping thrown in - I walk fast around that mall, but not fast enough to miss a good bargain), one night of Zumba (conveniently located next door to the dance studio) and one night of stitching - but since she didn't dance this year, that idea got squashed.  But now it's time to pick them up again!!  The picture above shows about 50 of them prepped for stitching, so I better get moving!

Well, that has been my past few weeks!!  I hope that everyone has had a great month for accomplishing projects and have managed to stay warm.  We're still in the deep freeze here with another storm possibly predicted for tomorrow.  I'd love one last big dump of snow, and then the sun can come out and it can warm up.  I am going to be so happy when Spring gets here.

Thanks for stopping by and for your comments and emails.  I love hearing from you!!

A Finish and Other Whatnots

Hi everyone!!  I hope that you all had a great weekend!  And that you're staying warm!  We've been colder than anything around here lately.  I'm hoping that the groundhog is right this year and Spring comes early.  In my book, it can't come early enough.  I'm sick of all this cold!!

I finally tamed the beast in the form of the mitered borders on the Cotton Club and it's finished.  After months of putting the thing together and then another month (or two... or three) of stressing over the darned mitered border, I finally took myself by the arm, forced myself into the sewing chair and decided it was time to get it off the quilting WIP list once and for all.  So thanks to those wonderful videos on YouTube, here it is:

Ahem...Bailey, do you think that you could move?

Hello?  Bailey?  Do you hear me?  Hmmm, not listening, are you???  Darned dog!!  No surprise there - just like my kids when they were little (well, they're still that way - who am I kidding?).  Oh well, the lighting isn't good for a photo op anyway.  So a couple hours later the lighting got better and I convinced Bailey to go outside (I told him that there was a kitty cat in his yard), and here is my finish:

The Cotton Club

(mitered borders and all)

I don't know what my big fear was with mitering those borders - it turned out to be so easy (although you'll notice the fabric tails at the corners that I can't bring myself to cut off until the quilt has its final pressing just in case).  I'm so happy that it's finally done!!

In stitching news, Ann Smith is coming along although not as quickly as I had hoped.  A few nights where stitching time was a big fat zero.  But this is where I was last time I posted:

And this is where I was a couple days ago - Dear Son came home for a visit along with four friends from college this weekend and they camped out in our basement.  Can you say Dorm party?  Lots of cooking and washing (DS couldn't let an opportunity pass by without having mom do his wash) and laughing because of all the funny college stories they told and yes, there were a couple that I had to plug my ears - kind of - LOL):

The over one lettering and the sky just below that were the real time killers.  That took so long!!  But I'm loving her with her bright colors.  Although by my next post I may be hating her.  After this section, I have a whole section of over one.  If you hear some screaming and a car furiously gunning its engine and the squealing of tires (that is if our roads aren't all iced over as they have been here for a while, otherwise you can envision me furiously doing donuts in the street), you can rest assured that it will be me trying to run it over!!

After finishing up the Cotton Club I decided to start on one of the quilting projects I picked for this year.  Well, I lied.  I actually started two projects.  I started on Sylvia's Bridal quilt and got the first four blocks done.   Dear Jane will wait a little bit as I think that I'm learning a lot with these blocks that will serve me well when it comes time for Jane.  These are persnickety blocks - a little more detailed than the Farmer's Wife blocks.  Or maybe not - I think that with these blocks I'm given less fabric to work with than with previous Block of the Month programs, so I have to really take my time in cutting out the pieces.  The blocks will be a finished size of 6 inches.

Sylvia's Bridal Quilt BOM

I decided that since these blocks were rather time consuming I would also work on another quilt.  One that doesn't require a lot of brain power and can go together easily.  This was a kit from a local quilt store that I picked up during the summer and because of the fabrics - Blackbird Designs Antique Fair, I just had to have it.  I only have three blocks together at this point:

Easy peasy blocks that I can practically do blindfolded....well, maybe not.

So there you have it.  A little bit about what I've been up to since my last post.

And I have an apology too.  One of my plans (not a resolution, but a plan) was to post more and also comment more in 2013.  I have seriously lagged in the commenting department and I'm sorry for that.  It seems that I've needed a slight break from commenting because of things that have been going on around here  - nothing bad at all, just the kind of thing where you need to put attention to other things for a while.  Seems that once I got through my craft room, I proceeded to go through the house with reckless abandon cleaning out things.  I don't know about other people, but I get a huge sense of "Ahhhh" when I get things cleaned out.  I'm happy, the Salvation Army is happy, but it hasn't left me with much time to comment - and when I've had time, I put it into sewing as a reward for cleaning things out.  We're also gearing up to do some inside home improvements which means I'm driving around in my car looking for paint colors, bathroom vanities, etc.  BTW, did I mention that I hate looking for paint colors!!

So, I'm sorry and hopefully I'll be back to commenting more soon.  I think that my husband is getting a little worried that I'm going to empty out the entire house and buy all new things!  Well, it's been a thought!  Not really - maybe some new stash - but definitely not a whole house of goods.

Have a wonderful week and thank you so much for your comments!!  They truly mean a lot to me!!

Just a Quickie Post

Hi everyone.  I hope that everyone's New Year's has gotten off to a great start!!  I did not make Resolutions this year, but I had a Plan (those are easily changed) to try to blog more frequently.  Well, we're looking at January 21st today, so that makes it three weeks.  I was going to try for two weeks - that was the Plan.   Obviously I didn't stick to that very well.

One of my plans though was to join Nicola's Scarlett Letter Challenge this year.  I felt that it was a great reason to finally stitch one or two of the samplers that I had hidden in stash.  I've done them before (like Ann Medd), but seemed to pass Scarlett Letter pieces over for other things.  This time I'm glad I didn't because I'm in love with this sampler.  This was my New Year's start (pics are clickable).  I'm a little further than this, but the camera is dead and I didn't feel like fooling around with the phone camera:

Ann Smith

The Scarlett Letter

AVAS and 35 count Magnolia linen

I love the bright happy colors of her.  What I don't like is all the over one.  I usually avoid over one like the plague, but finally broke out the magnifier and I'm so happy that I did.  The magnifier and I have become good friends.  The letters are full cross over one and the sky below that is tent stitch over one.

The Cotton Club isn't finished yet.  Just the borders now and it will be a wrap.  My 'plan' was to have it finished last week, but then I had forgotten that my daughter only had half days for most of the week due to semester finals, so that cut into my sewing machine time.  And I also got into a huge stash room clean out.  But while thinking about the end of the Cotton Club, I went back and forth about what to start next and it came down to two quilts.  In going through my stash, I decided to work on one old stash piece and one new piece.  And yes, I should have my head examined because in addition to trying to make progress on my basket blocks with Siobhan, I'm going to work on these two:

I have had this quilt in my stash for about 10 years.  Just about the time I stopped quilting for a while when I became busy with PTA activities  at my children's school, this BOM starting showing up in the mailbox.  I just filed them away and didn't look at them again until last year.  This one will be a challenge, but for some reason working on those baskets with Siobhan and actually appliquing has given me the courage to work on this.  There will no fast results with this one - it's going to be slow going as a lot of it is not only appliqueing, but also paper piecing and I'm not the quickest nor best paper piecer in the world.  I'm planning for two blocks a month - not a lot, but we'll see how it goes.  Maybe a block a week....maybe!!

The other quilt will be more straightforward, but another one that I've loved for a long time:

I don't know what my obsession is with quilts like this - it's very reminiscent of the Farmer's Wife, but I'm really looking forward to working on this one.  The colors are different than the Farmer's Wife and I think that is what I like about it - different blocks and different colors.  The BOM has 10 blocks each month so between the two of these quilts I've got my work cut out for me.  And besides these two, I want to get working on Phebe - I actually have a couple pieces ready to go, just have to applique them down.  So it looks like I'm going to have my quilting work cut out for me (well, no, I'll do the cutting - LOL) for the next year or so.

New Year's started off on a really great note for me.  I won a couple of giveaways and wanted to post  to thank each of the girls that sponsored them.  Before the New Year even started I won a giveaway from Lisa from a Southern Bell Misplaced in Michigan.  I found out that Lisa lives not all that far from me and hope that I'll be able to meet with her soon:

The red fabrics immediately went into the pile of reds for my baskets and you can't see them, but there were two stitching wallets - one plastic and one mesh that I'm already using.  And the pillow (a favorite of mine) is backed with a Fleur de Lis charm.  UGH, I can't find the picture I took and the camera battery is dead.  But it was so sweet and thank you so much Lisa.  I hope that we can meet up soon.

Right after the New Year I won another giveaway from Shelly of the Arizona Stitcher:

The box was full of so many goodies, the Little House Needleworks chart and the linen, ribbon trims, a stitcher's mug, some wonderful Christmas far quarters, chenille trims, a needle minder, note cards, tissues, a christmas towel, prickly pear jelly (yum) and chocolate!  Thank you so much Shelly.

The next giveaway I won was from was Becky.  She held a stitching challenge last year and I won!  The prize is a $100 dollar gift certificate to the LNS of her choice.  I can't wait to get that in my hot little hands and have some fun spending it.

Which means that I will acquire more stash.  But quite frankly I need to get rid of some stash.   Right after the New Year, I got on some kind of cleaning tear and really went at my craft room.  The closet is so clean and organized right now:

Everything in it's place (well almost, I just noticed the green top of the thread keeper system laying not where it should be) and things labeled, but.........this isn't the only closet that my stash is in.  It's also in two other closets, three cupboards and quite a few Rubbermaid bins in the workroom.  You can accumulate a lot of stash when you stitch, quilt and knit.  I think that I could easily be shown on an episode of The Hoarders.  My husband definitely thinks so and you probably would too if you saw pictures of the complete mess.   So I'm thinking of posting some of my stash on this blog or another one.  I actually thought of doing this a year or so ago, but hesitated thinking that people wouldn't want half of the things that I would get rid of.  And they might not, but I thought it was worth a try seeing what people would want and the rest I could possibly donate.  So stay tuned.  I hope to get a new camera battery tomorrow and have things put together by the next time I post.

So that's it in my part of the woods!!  It's cold and snowy here today - a great day to hunker down sew and put a pot of soup on the stove.  Hope everyone has a wonderful week!!